Profiles

A crime fiction fan is being given the chance to have their name as a character in a new book.

Award-winning Whitley Bay author Ann Cleeves is running the auction to raise money in memory of Shetland teenager Vaila Harvey.

The 16-year-old died from cancer in 2008 and a fund has been set up in her memory to raise money to allow young people from Shetland to travel.

Ann was asked to get involved by Vaila's parents and her connection with Shetland stretches back more than 30 years to when she was 17 and got a job as assistant cook at the Fair Isle bird observatory.

Vaila died in 2008

She immediately fell in love with the islands and is still a regular visitor there. The book with the auctioned character name will be the fourth in her Shetland quartet.

Honour memory

Ann said: "It seems appropriate because it was Shetland and friends and I do feel so grateful to Shetland.

"It's as much about her memory being honoured as the fund itself. She was so sparky and wanted to travel."

Ann said many people on Shetland had been affected by what had happened to Vaila and wanted to do something.

She said travel from Shetland could be expensive and the fund would make it easier for young people to take up opportunities to venture further afield.

Ann has been friends with Vaila's parents for many years. Vaila's father Paul was warden on Fair Isle and her mother Liz was administrator there some years after Ann worked there.

She said she already had an idea for how the auctioned character would fit into the book and the character would have a fairly major part in the book. She said it would be an interesting challenge for her to work it in.

Ann said she writes best in the morning

The highest bidder will be announced in March 2009 and the book is due to be published in 2010.

'Bleak beauty'

As well as the summer job on Shetland, Ann met her husband Tim there when he went as a visiting ornithologist.

About four years ago they were on a trip to Shetland when Ann saw three ravens in the snow - an image which inspired her breakthrough book Raven Black, for which she won the Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award for best crime novel of the year in 2006.

Ann said: "I think because Shetland is so dramatic that helps. I think it's got this bleak beauty."

Another series of her books is set in Northumberland and features the character Vera Stanhope.

She said: "I suppose I am known for writing with a strong sense of place. That works for both Shetland and Northumberland."

Ann moved to Tyneside in 1986 and despite moving away to West Yorkshire for seven years between then and now she said they always wanted to move back because of her love of the coast and hills.

She said: "When I go to Shetland, as I do when I pass the Angel of the North, I feel that I am arriving somewhere that's important to me."

Worth the wait

Ann had been writing for many years before she won the award. She started writing when she and her husband lived on Hilbre, an island in the Dee Estuary where he was warden and they were the only people living there.

Ann's books have been published around the world

She said: "I suppose crime was always my comfort reading. I did literature at university and if I was miserable I would turn to Dorothy L Sayers or someone.

"I always knew I wanted to write and I thought I would write something I would want to read."

She said it was the nicest way for it to happen - to have the success after writing for a long time. Her books have now been translated into many different languages.

She said the success means she often now spends time travelling and giving talks which she doesn't see as a chore but it is always lovely for her to get back to her writing.

Ann said she tends to work best in the mornings and she starts writing on her laptop in her kitchen from about 7am.

She said: "I don't think about it as work."

She said there is a supportive network of authors in the north-east of England and also that there is good support from readers in the North East with well-attended book events.

The latest book in Ann Cleeves' Shetland Quartet, Red Bones, was launched at the Lit & Phil, in Westgate Road, Newcastle, on 19 February 2009. Shetland fiddler Chris Stout performed at the launch.